Fontaine (2017: 3-4):
Putting lexicology into context
There is a deliberate play on words in the heading for this section. One part of the meaning relates to the frame, PUT X INTO CONTEXT, which means that X is given with the textual and/or situational context in which it was produced, i.e. provides more information so that X can be better understood. There is another related expression to this one, TAKE X OUT OF CONTEXT, which means that X has been removed from the textual and/or situational context in which it was produced, i.e. information is missing which makes understanding flawed in some way. In these two everyday expressions, we get a sense of what context suggests to most people and that is meaning or at least meaningful information. Context is where we ‘get’ meaning but it is also a kind of meaning, or rather kinds of meanings. In SFL terms, context “is that which helps determine meaning. This includes the surrounding text and the surrounding circumstances whatever they may be” (Wegener, 2011:4–5). The concept of meaning within SFL stems from Firth (1957), who saw meaning as function in context. For Halliday meaning is best viewed as ‘choice’ (Halliday, 2013), which he sees as an extension of Saussur[e]an paradigmatic relations (Ibid.: 16).
Blogger Comments:
This misrepresents the SFL notion of context. To be clear,
- context is the culture modelled as a semiotic system; it is modelled as a higher level of symbolic abstraction than language;
- the surrounding text, the co-text, is (an instance of) language, not context; and
- the surrounding circumstances of a text, in the sense of the material environment of a text, is the perceptual field of the speaker.
The context (and co-text) of a text and the environment of a text differ in terms of order of experience. The context of a text, a situation, is second-order (semiotic) experience, since it is construed by the language of a text that is projected by a speaker. The environment of a text, on the other hand, is first-order (material) experience. Where the semiotic context of a text is metaphenomenal, the material environment of a text is phenomenal.